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The seed of what we are witnessing today was sowed at the very outset, in 1947. My school friend, the late Vinod Mehta, as honest an editor as ever entered the once hallowed profession, put his finger on the nub of the matter. “We have had 800 years of Muslim rule, 200 years of British rule and we have given the Muslims a brand new country, Pakistan.” He paused. “What would you say if the Hindu sometimes feels short changed?”

Having known Vinod as a buddy for 60 years, I knew exactly where Vinod was coming from. The full import of that conversation would take up a book.

Let me come to the point on which we came to an agreement in the sense that we lowered our voices. If the Congress was so fiercely opposed to the two-nation theory which stated that Hindus and Muslims constituted two nations, how did it suddenly accept the creation of a Muslim Pakistan? Clearly a vast majority of Hindus would feel cheated because if Pakistan was kosher, so too should Hindustan have been?

I can only imagine what kind of hopelessness made Naqvi write the above! Remarkable what this election has achieved BEYOND just the verdict/numbers/government.

They can sense that the old order has just crumbled and nothing they can do will undo it.

An honest Hindu state would have been better than a dishonest secular one which brought Muslims down to the lowest possible rungs of the socio economic ladder reflected in the Sachar Committee report of 2005. It is argued that a Hindu India would have been an illiberal theocracy. Is Modi supervising a model secular state? Britain is an Anglican Monarchy which guarantees equal opportunity to all its citizens, irrespective of colour and creed. Sadiq Khan is the Mayor of London and Sajid Javid, as Home Secretary, is technically in line to become the Prime Minister.

Instead of gliding seamlessly from British Raj to Hindu Raj (Hindustan), Jawaharlal Nehru insisted on secularism to which his colleagues were opposed. Purushottam Das Tandon, Babu Rajendra Prasad, Vallabhbhai Patel never shared Nehru’s vision. Indeed, even Gandhi differed with Nehru. “I support Khilafat because that is Mohammad Ali’s religion.” he said “And he will hold back the Muslim from killing the cow which is my religion.”

Gandhi was a Hindu to the core but he also preached a secularism that was sustainable in a deeply religious land. His eccentricities, his tolerance of caste, one would have grappled with, but his would have been a benign Hinduism. That admirers of his murderers are now in Parliament is mind boggling.

TWO election BUT especially 2019 election is all it took for tubelights to switch on. Why did they not speak up earlier and things would have been much better for all!

Rest is the same old narrative against Modi/BJP. They know what was/is wrong but they are not yet ready to give up their privileges and still look down on hindu assertion even while the actively promote all other kinds of identities to cut the hindus down to size.

The above is about as directly as he telegraphed his intent in 2014, following up with a focus on elevating the quality of life of the rural poor. Tharoor had gotten into a controversial argument back then - responding that 'Muslim rulers were part of us and not invaders' yada yada, which Modi ignored and avoided getting into an argument on.

Modi could choose the LKA/MMJ approach of top down focus on Hindu causes driven by hardline focus at the top - which would have directed all political opposition at him. Or he could choose to spend 5-10 years rapidly eliminating the basic quality of life issues that made Hindus weak, defensive and passive in their own home, while correspondingly destroying the Left ecosystem and making Hindu causes a fait accompli. He chose the latter, and unlike generations of prior governments, showed he could implement that path too.

Rudradev wrote:I just had a tubelight moment regarding exactly WHY it is vitally important to challenge the notion of "HinduISM" as a "RELIGION"... the category in which Indian Secularists have constrained and cast it since at least 1950.

1. The traditional values and ethical precepts of Dharma are both the life-blood and building blocks of Indian civilization.

2. If these things can be cast as "religion", then by definition, they are subjective, unprovable, and incapable of being rationally defended.

3. That which cannot be rationally defended is, again by definition, a form of prejudice. Hence, bad for society, and worthy of culling.

By this particular form of intellectual trickery, the entirety of Dharmic norms, mores, and principles evolved over five millennia have become tainted as not only opposed to "reason", but actually a form of toxic bias.

This explains the need to recast Hinduism and Sanatan Dharma as something entirely outside the scope of the two way "religion" vs. "rationality" debate. This false dichotomy is at the heart of Breaking India discourse, every bit as much as the (now eroding) wretched poverty of Hindus is central to Abrahamic claims of being a "civilizing influence".

It also explains why the standard-bearers of Hinduphobia from the Left have very often cast themselves as "rationalists" or "anti-superstition activists"... be it Periyar, Karunanidhi, Kalburgi, or Gauri Lankesh.

The Ghent school and Balagangadhara (Balu) have a lot to say about how India has no native religions, what a religion is, and so on.

In the circular, the commissioner of Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Department, directs to conduct Yagna 'so that the state may enjoy bountiful rain and attain prosperity'.

V.Anbazhagan, Editor of "Makkal Seithi Maiyyam" and a social worker, approached the High Court challenging this circular on the ground that it is against the tenets of the Constitution of India and also against the concept of secularism followed by our country and violates the very objects and scope of the Tamil Nadu Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Act, 1959. He also sought a direction to the state and HR&CE Department to develop scientific temper, humanism and spirit of inquiry and reform as per Article 51(a)(h) of the Constitution of India.

This Court cannot destroy such beliefs or hopes of the multitude of people, remarked the Madras High Court while dismissing a petition challenging the circular issued by the Commissioner of Tamil Nadu Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Department, Department to perform "yagnas" propagating rain, in all important temples under its control.

Rudradev wrote:I just had a tubelight moment regarding exactly WHY it is vitally important to challenge the notion of "HinduISM" as a "RELIGION"... the category in which Indian Secularists have constrained and cast it since at least 1950.

1. The traditional values and ethical precepts of Dharma are both the life-blood and building blocks of Indian civilization.

2. If these things can be cast as "religion", then by definition, they are subjective, unprovable, and incapable of being rationally defended.

3. That which cannot be rationally defended is, again by definition, a form of prejudice. Hence, bad for society, and worthy of culling.

By this particular form of intellectual trickery, the entirety of Dharmic norms, mores, and principles evolved over five millennia have become tainted as not only opposed to "reason", but actually a form of toxic bias.

This explains the need to recast Hinduism and Sanatan Dharma as something entirely outside the scope of the two way "religion" vs. "rationality" debate. This false dichotomy is at the heart of Breaking India discourse, every bit as much as the (now eroding) wretched poverty of Hindus is central to Abrahamic claims of being a "civilizing influence".

It also explains why the standard-bearers of Hinduphobia from the Left have very often cast themselves as "rationalists" or "anti-superstition activists"... be it Periyar, Karunanidhi, Kalburgi, or Gauri Lankesh.

Not to demean your tubelight moment, but BTDT (been there, done that) . A few years ago, I started a thread on BRF about how Sanatana Dharma could be shown to be consistent with three fundamental axioms. You had also posted a positive comment there.

My idea was as follows. It is impossible to reduce the fundamental truth (which is the goal of Sanatana Dharma) to logical axioms, since that fundamental truth is defined as being beyond logic itself, beyond axioms. It just IS.

However, you can reach that truth by persistent efforts (sadhana). This sadhana takes the form of bhakti marga, gyana marga, or karma yoga. A subset of gyana marga would be this logical effort of reduction of SD to axioms.

The idea is that ordinary folk, who have undergone a STEM education, have already performed some sadhana, though not with the goal of attaining moksha - their goal was more along the lines of making a living, with maybe 1% of those folk being truly motivated by scientific achievement and curiosity or the upliftment of the world at large. However, at least a fraction of them have certainly undergone the discipline of rigorous study. Can those years of study be employed in some way to get a slight headstart at true spiritual sadhana? IOW, can the scientific training, which is based on axioms of science and mathematics, be converted into some little "extra credit" to get some spiritual insight? How would we go about doing that?

By coming up with axioms which relate to Sanatana Dharma itself. Note, once again, that the fundamental truth is beyond these axioms, so all that the axiom view affords, is a little reduction in the spiritual effort, by redirecting "STEM sadhana" towards "moksha sadhana." It also serves as a gentle introduction to people unfamiliar with SD - they too can employ their STEM training to get a little insight and familiarity with SD.

I had come up with three fundamental axioms, and tried to show that all the dharmic paths of India - SD, Jainism, Buddhism, and Sikhism were consistent with these axioms. That the differences in interpretation between these paths, were more like the differences between the ensemble view and the Copenhagen view of quantum mechanics, rather than like the difference between Newtonian and quantum physics.

I think if we can show that there is a logical basis to the practices prevalent in SD, that is a very good beginning, and that begins with axioms. The practices of SD are geared towards attaining the fundamental truth, and that truth is indeed beyond logic - but that doesn't mean that the practices and beliefs can't be shown to be logically derived from a small set of fundamentals. Because, you see, one of the persistent criticisms that the EJ types direct at SD (this has also been personally directed at me), is that SD is just a "hodge-podge of rituals" with no basis, whereas Xtianity has a sound basis. Xtianity indeed has this axiom of "fall from grace" and "redemption by a savior." But is there a similar set of axioms which Hindus, Jains, Buddhists, and Sikhs universally agree upon? My "axiom" attempt tried to show that indeed, there IS such a set of axioms.

This is OT for this thread, but your post above reminded me of this effort years ago. I'll stop with this here.

EDIT: I was looking for that old "axioms" thread, but it's totally gone. It was more than 10 years ago. Oh well.

Last edited by sudarshan on 06 Jun 2019 09:03, edited 1 time in total.

Rudradev wrote:I just had a tubelight moment regarding exactly WHY it is vitally important to challenge the notion of "HinduISM" as a "RELIGION"... the category in which Indian Secularists have constrained and cast it since at least 1950....The Ghent school and Balagangadhara (Balu) have a lot to say about how India has no native religions, what a Religion is, and so on.

It would be somewhat biblical but not entirely unfair to cast the deracinated lot into hellfire for their misunderstanding of what is Religion and what is secularism. Hindu intellectuals in post independence era have largely failed to deliver a well articulated counterpoint to Religion (with capital R).

My personal view - the Ghent school view while refreshing, largely ignores the epistemological foundations of Hinduism and focuses more keenly on the Colonial contruct and the distortions and consequences thereof... while this is important academically, Sanathana Dharma has historically formulated what is a Belief and what is Dharma. There is a way to articulate this for the present context but it’s not been explored. The onus of defining the core precepts and values of Sanathana Dharma is still missing from the Politico-Economic angle that will define the new India in the making.

My own simplified view that I’m sharing with anyone who listens - lets say you grew up knowing the color Red has many shades.Catastrophically all civilization went into a dark age, separated and remenants reestablished civilization in new pockets -Now each group discovered Magenta, Carmine, Ruby, etc and over time they got named as book colors grouped under a term Pantone.Much later these isolated group rediscovered a land full of people who knew Red and all its shades and conquered them.They made these natives believe that Red is really another Pantone. That because Pantone’s are beliefs they should not interfere in state...There needs to be a concept of seperation of Pantone from State. Now the deracinated folks in Red lands believe this as modernity...The folks that still know Red in all its shades still know the truth of the facts. The Pantones still hold true to their beliefs and so do the anti-Pantones and the well meaning, but deluded separation from Pantone believers.Someday that wool will be lifted from the collective eyes of those that knew Red but now see only Pantone?

Will consume one more time on the weekend.... and respond on the non-westerner thread.

But, beware, if you say, let us compete on equal terms scientifically; may the best theory carry the day; and that happens to be your theory!

Science, but more specifically the scientific community has not historically shown the sagacity to recognize quickly the lack of clothes on the Emperor! It eventually gets it right, almost by accident and compulsion, never by genuine curiosity - perhaps harsh, but...The method of Science itself is a Pantone and could use some correction.

We have moved on from the Maratha map in 2014 to the C.Maurya map in 2019. This is a reset, its for Bharat to lose if she does not fix her ken.

My two paisa - it is not even between equals - its like the false equivalence between India and Paki-satan -Worse the deracinated ignores the virtuous Kama sutra trained trophy wife for the...glitter of the poor desperate nauch girl pole dancer with nary the talent nor sophistication!

After hearing and reading some recent statements from likes of Shekhar Gupta, Yogendra Yadav, or Karan Thapar, one might be tempted to believe that there is some semblance of introspection being indulged in, but when seen in wider context one realises that there is no introspection at all.

On May 31, news website Scroll.in joined this growing list of organisations. As of June 3, at least 16 employees from the editorial side have been let go. The editorial team has gone from 40 to 24 (this does not include journalists at The Field and Scroll's Hindi news website Satyagrah). Apart from the editorial team, some people from the production, tech/marketing team were also laid off. The total number of people laid-off is just over 20. Scroll has also stopped its award-winning video show, Your Morning Fix, which aired on Hotstar.

<snip>

Another employee added, “I was told that Scroll could not afford to have specialisations anymore.” The employee was also told that Scroll could no longer afford its network of correspondents. Recalling the conversation, the person added: “I was told that the ones who remain will stay on a pay cut.” Simply put, the basic tenor of the conversation was “we are scaling back our operations, becoming a very small team we used to be earlier,” the employee said.

<snip>

Another employee quoted Scroll’s founder Samir Patil as saying that the current economy had impacted investors. Patil was speaking at an internal meeting held at Scroll’s office on June 1.

<snip>

One of the employees that Newslaundry spoke to said that Scroll would now focus more on raising money from readers’ support. It was only last year that Scroll made a partial shift to a reader-supported, subscription-based model. Another employee said that Scroll might now look for grants for particular beats.

Seems the *investors* were not happy with the performance @ Scroll during the recently concluded elections.

khatvaanga wrote:the biggest thing to me from BJP manifesto is their promise of potable water to all thru pipes. While i am a (lot) skeptical about it due to the distances from water sources in, lets say, states like RJ or lack of any perennial water sources in districts such as Anantapur etc. I hope these things are taken into consideration when the policy paper on it comes around. Water tables have absolutely been devastated across india past 100-200 years.

Earlier in our history, from ancient times thru british times, we used to have koneru or watering holes in almost every single village across India. Maybe there will be a Jal Yukt Shivir kinda mass movement across india to resurrect them.

Mysore used to have a lot of large ponds centuries ago, now they are all dry even going back to my childhood and are now playgrounds or exhibition grounds. Bangalore is also the same way, they seem to be actively killing off the lakes in order to steal land for apartments (which end up going vacant). We need to take more care of the environment for future generations. But we seem to think only of today. Maybe artificial lakes could be built and an ecology may come up around it after a manual start?

Cities fast losing groundwater and lakes should talk to Siruthuli. They have single handedly, against much opposition from politicians and realty folks, have brought up the ground water levels of Coimbatore. For the past 15 years they have done this without outside support. No amount of praise is enough.

It was setup by the big local companies. Their process should be scalable to other big cities. They are very particular about including the politicians and public in their initiatives. They give credit to the local politicians at all times.

Another interesting development is Congress not sending any of their reps in Media debates. Media debates have become a bit boring nowadays. But I just could not understand Congress strategy, Will they not become irrelevant if their voice is not heard in the Media? Or maybe they are thinking this is the way to punish the media who did not do their propaganda work well.

While I am really happy about the thumping majority BJP has got, is this trend of having a weak opposition good for some healthy debates in the parliament before new legislation are passed? In other words, has the balance of power shifted more towards the executive branch of the government? These are some of the very serious questions we need to ask especially in the long term.

williams wrote:Another interesting development is Congress not sending any of their reps in Media debates. Media debates have become a bit boring nowadays. But I just could not understand Congress strategy, Will they not become irrelevant if their voice is not heard in the Media? Or maybe they are thinking this is the way to punish the media who did not do their propaganda work well.

While I am really happy about the thumping majority BJP has got, is this trend of having a weak opposition good for some healthy debates in the parliament before new legislation are passed? In other words, has the balance of power shifted more towards the executive branch of the government? These are some of the very serious questions we need to ask especially in the long term.

How is the BJP/NM/AS responsible for the "weak" opposition, should they then give away half their hard won seats to the congis/commies to make them "strong"

why was there never any talk of a "weak opposition" when the RTE act was passed and the communal violence bill was slyly being setup to be passed and why was the word "majoritarianism" never mentioned then or even coined at the time

50% of the votes + 1 vote or 50% of the seats +1 seat officially and by law constitutes a majority. Every political party in India strives for this magical figure because it ensures both stability and continuity without being subject to blackmail.

and for anyone to deny the legitiimacy of such math is both a constitutional as well as a democratic travesty.

the congis are hoping that after a hiatus of a month of being away from the fourth estate, the short sighted media as well as the mypoic press will forget the congi humiliation as well as their disastrous performance of their mafia familia.

everyone is keen to know why the congi family failed to pull it off and why they are not willing to take the blame for their failure. That's why the congis are hiding from the press because they, (pappu and pappi), are simply not willing to take the blame. They want their fanboys to first place the blame elsewhere before they emerge into the sunshine smelling of roses.

isn't this what akaless of the SP did first, ban his spokespeople from the media, even before the congis did so

^Chinese are giving legitimacy to their Gandhis - that is Chinese Gandhis.

The body language is telling. #Pappu is jumping around like a pidi and grooming himself to look smart. Also his body language sitting at the sofa is trying to tell that he wants to be in command but given the order from the chinese delegation he is ready to jump. Sonia's body language is more like a Gungadin!

disha wrote:^Chinese are giving legitimacy to their Gandhis - that is Chinese Gandhis.

The body language is telling. #Pappu is jumping around like a pidi and grooming himself to look smart. Also his body language sitting at the sofa is trying to tell that he wants to be in command but given the order from the chinese delegation he is ready to jump. Sonia's body language is more like a Gungadin!

The Chinese delegation is completely at ease and in command!

This is not the first time they have met . He has previously been hosted by the chicoms

williams wrote:Another interesting development is Congress not sending any of their reps in Media debates. Media debates have become a bit boring nowadays. But I just could not understand Congress strategy, Will they not become irrelevant if their voice is not heard in the Media? Or maybe they are thinking this is the way to punish the media who did not do their propaganda work well.

While I am really happy about the thumping majority BJP has got, is this trend of having a weak opposition good for some healthy debates in the parliament before new legislation are passed? In other words, has the balance of power shifted more towards the executive branch of the government? These are some of the very serious questions we need to ask especially in the long term.

I read somewhere that the Congress is taking a "break" from the media for about 2 months. Maybe they realize that people are sick of them. Time for them to take a break forever.

I am hoping for the Congress to get disbanded and a new nationalist opposition party come up. Khujliwal had a golden chance to be a good leader but he ruined it with greed. Who will be BJP's main opposition in the years to come? They already have succession forming with Shah and Yogi as next gen.

williams wrote:Another interesting development is Congress not sending any of their reps in Media debates. Media debates have become a bit boring nowadays. But I just could not understand Congress strategy, Will they not become irrelevant if their voice is not heard in the Media? Or maybe they are thinking this is the way to punish the media who did not do their propaganda work well.

While I am really happy about the thumping majority BJP has got, is this trend of having a weak opposition good for some healthy debates in the parliament before new legislation are passed? In other words, has the balance of power shifted more towards the executive branch of the government? These are some of the very serious questions we need to ask especially in the long term.

I read somewhere that the Congress is taking a "break" from the media for about 2 months. Maybe they realize that people are sick of them. Time for them to take a break forever.

I am hoping for the Congress to get disbanded and a new nationalist opposition party come up. Khujliwal had a golden chance to be a good leader but he ruined it with greed. Who will be BJP's main opposition in the years to come? They already have succession forming with Shah and Yogi as next gen.

some people are born genetically deformed. This is a permanent condition that just cannot be corrected.

Do you seriously expect such social and mental defectives to be leaders.

sudarshan wrote:My idea was as follows. It is impossible to reduce the fundamental truth (which is the goal of Sanatana Dharma) to logical axioms, since that fundamental truth is defined as being beyond logic itself, beyond axioms. It just IS.

However, you can reach that truth by persistent efforts (sadhana). This sadhana takes the form of bhakti marga, gyana marga, or karma yoga. A subset of gyana marga would be this logical effort of reduction of SD to axioms.

The idea is that ordinary folk, who have undergone a STEM education, have already performed some sadhana, though not with the goal of attaining moksha - their goal was more along the lines of making a living, with maybe 1% of those folk being truly motivated by scientific achievement and curiosity or the upliftment of the world at large. However, at least a fraction of them have certainly undergone the discipline of rigorous study. Can those years of study be employed in some way to get a slight headstart at true spiritual sadhana? IOW, can the scientific training, which is based on axioms of science and mathematics, be converted into some little "extra credit" to get some spiritual insight? How would we go about doing that?

By coming up with axioms which relate to Sanatana Dharma itself. Note, once again, that the fundamental truth is beyond these axioms, so all that the axiom view affords, is a little reduction in the spiritual effort, by redirecting "STEM sadhana" towards "moksha sadhana." It also serves as a gentle introduction to people unfamiliar with SD - they too can employ their STEM training to get a little insight and familiarity with SD.

I had come up with three fundamental axioms, and tried to show that all the dharmic paths of India - SD, Jainism, Buddhism, and Sikhism were consistent with these axioms. That the differences in interpretation between these paths, were more like the differences between the ensemble view and the Copenhagen view of quantum mechanics, rather than like the difference between Newtonian and quantum physics.

I know its OT, but I would love to learn more about your axioms sudarshan-ji.

The above article is an in-depth exploration of a shadowy character named Gene Sharp. He is the architect of the entire Colour Revolution methodology employed repeatedly from Yugoslavia to Syria to Venezuela.

It's a very long read with a lot of information, but well worth it to understand how this particular kind of 4GW was formulated and how it is conducted.

It may only take 3.5% of the population to topple a dictator – with civil resistanceErica Chenoweth

...Today, those seeking knowledge about the theory and practice of civil resistance can find a wealth of information at their fingertips. In virtually any language, one can find training manuals, strategy-building tools, facilitation guides and documentation about successes and mistakes of past nonviolent campaigns.

Material is available in many formats, including graphic novels, e-classes, films and documentaries, scholarly books, novels, websites, research monographs, research inventories, and children’s books. And of course, the world is full of experienced activists with wisdom to share....

This does not mean nonviolent resistance always works. Of course it does not, and short-term setbacks are common too. But long-term change never comes with submission, resignation, or despair about the inevitability and intractability of the status quo.

And among the different types of dissent available (armed insurrection or combining armed and unarmed action), nonviolent resistance has historically been the most effective. Compared with armed struggle, whose romanticized allure obscures its staggering costs, nonviolent resistance has actually been the quickest, least costly, and safest way to struggle. Moreover, civil resistance is recognized as a fundamental human right under international law.

Nonviolent resistance does not happen overnight or automatically. It requires an informed and prepared public, keen to the strategy and dynamics of its political power. Although nonviolent campaigns often begin with a committed and experienced core, successful ones enlarge the diversity of participants, maintain nonviolent discipline and expand the types of nonviolent actions they use.They constantly increase their base of supporters, build coalitions, leverage social networks, and generate connections with those in the opponent’s network who may be ambivalent about cooperating with oppressive policies....

Crucially, nonviolent resistance works not by melting the heart of the opponent but by constraining their options. A leader and his inner circle cannot pass and implement policies alone. They require cooperation and obedience from many people to carry out plans and policies.

...

Of course, nonviolent resistance often evokes brutality by the government, especially as campaigns escalate their demands and use more disruptive techniques. But historical data shows that when campaigns are able to prepare, train, and remain resilient, they often succeed regardless of whether the government uses violence against them.

Historical studies suggest that it takes 3.5% of a population engaged in sustained nonviolent resistance to topple brutal dictatorships.

This is written by a left-wing activist but if you read between the lines, all the ingredients of the recipe are there.

>Constrain options by recruiting people in govt to sabotage its functioning>Provoke harsh responses that can then be used to fan the flames of international "human rights campaigns">Prepare and train, using a wealth of resources, studies, techniques, and other information helpfully compiled by Gene Sharp and others in the Culinary Institute>The key is to open the gates for powerful nations to exercise hard options for bringing pressure on the so-called "dictator" you want to remove; providing pretexts such as "human rights violations" and "suppression of democracy"> Ultimately it is possible for just 3.5% of a population to remove a government (whether democratically elected or not) by this sort of activity... and to do so in the name of "safeguarding democracy"!

We need to seriously ponder what all of this means and how it can manifest itself in even worse ways than it already has.

Some relevant excerpts from the Gene Sharp article on Nonsite, linked above:

Gene Sharp’s The Politics of Nonviolent Action was widely and, in general, favorably reviewed. The Western Political Quarterly deemed the tome “monumental,” and Armed Forces and Society compared it to Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations.69 The Journal of Developing Areas described it as “the most important, comprehensive, and challenging work on nonviolence to appear in this century,” and International Organization dedicated twenty-one journal pages to its discussion.70

Sharp’s nuclear theorist mentor, Thomas Schelling, wrote the book’s introduction, capturing its essence: Sharp’s work “does not attempt to convert you to a new faith. It is not about a compassionate political philosophy that, if only enough of us believed it, would make the walls come tumbling down. It offers insight, by theory and example, into a complex field of strategy.”71 Ostensibly, for Sharp, nonviolent action was not about philosophical commitments, but about superior gamesmanship; not sentiment, but strategy. It was the heyday of game theory—“the theory of strategic interaction between rational individuals”—and true to the zeitgeist, Sharp offered an almost scientific formula for successful nonviolent protest movements, a rationalization of political resistance.72

In Part One, Sharp lays out what would become his best-known argument, eventually termed his “social theory of power.”73 Here, echoing Machiavelli’s dictum that “the safest castle is to not be hated by the people,” Sharp argues a state’s power is always fundamentally based on the voluntary consent, obedience, and cooperation of the governed.74 If one wants to “control” or collapse a regime, one must figure out how to withdraw these things en masse.75 The most strategic way to do this, Sharp says, is for protest movements to attack the sources of a government’s political power with “nonviolent action.”76 In later work, he would urge protesters and their handlers to focus their moral incursions on the “pillars” of a regime’s power, institutions like the media, universities, and the military.77

In Part Two, Sharp details 198 nonviolent “actions,” the specific maneuvers of his “technique of struggle.” Culled from the long history of labor struggles, civil rights campaigns, and national liberation movements, and offered in index form, this list of protest tactics includes: use of symbolic colors, parades, vigils, use of banners written in English for international consumption, mock awards, protest disrobings; forms of economic non-cooperation like boycotts, divestment campaigns, and strikes; political non-cooperation, like refusing to assist law enforcement; and psychological interventions like fasts.

...

In Part Three, he presents nonviolent action as a style of combat he terms “political jujitsu”—using the stronger opponents’ energy against themselves, rather than confronting it head-on.79 In the dynamics of political jujitsu, government repression is itself a source of power for revolutionaries. If protesters can nonviolently provoke a violent response from the state, public opinion might be turned against the regime, its moral authority weakened: “…Nonviolence helps the opponent’s repression throw him off balance politically.”80 Sharp writes, “When the system largely characterized by political violence is actively, albeit nonviolently, challenged, one can expect that the basic nature of that system will be more clearly revealed in the crisis then during less difficult times. The violence upon which the system depends is thus brought to the surface and revealed in unmistakable terms for all to see: it then becomes more possible to remove it.

...

Gene Sharp was a modern Machiavelli—but in reverse. He was not interested, like Machiavelli, in how to build, maintain, direct, or transform the popular will that buttresses political power. Rather, he was interested in how to disintegrate it. In Sharp’s “politics of nonviolent action,” the state was not the prize, not even a terrain of struggle: it was the enemy, the object to be paralyzed and dissolved.105 And in this regard, Sharp fit neatly into the emerging neoliberal consensus’s pathological hatred of the state, and unerring faith in the “free market.”

...

Neoliberalism’s advance was long, marked first, many argue, by the economic liberalization of Pinochet’s authoritarian Chile following the successful CIA-backed coup against the democratic socialist administration of Salvador Allende in 1973. Another important moment was the “structural adjustment” of New York City in 1975, wherein Wall Street creditors used a fiscal crisis to force a bleak public austerity package on the city, with little skin off their noses. In 1979, chairman of the Federal Reserve Paul Volker confronted high wages by jacking up the federal funds rate, eventually to 20%, plunging the U.S. into a “cold bath recession.” Wage freezes and concessions followed, as well as debt-crises throughout the export-oriented Third World, useful opportunities for more creditor-driven, sovereignty-eroding structural adjustment policies. But the neoliberal assault was kicked into high gear with the Reagan Revolution of the early 1980s, which featured dramatic tax cuts, the rollback of public services, deregulation, and union busting.

This “neoliberal turn” was accompanied by a more pugnacious, neoconservative foreign policy. U.S. grand strategy shifted from mere “containment” of the communist contagion, to active “rollback.” The face of anticommunism changed, from brooding Ivy League spook to crusading Sunbelt cowboy.

An important organ of the new foreign policy was the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a Congressionally funded “democracy-promotion” organization launched in 1983.126 In 1968, Bissell had reminded those assembled at the Council of Foreign Relations headquarters that clandestine intelligence funding was politically costly if exposed. The NED would be different. As Reagan declared at the founding: “This program will not be hidden in shadows. It’ll stand proudly in the spotlight… And, of course, it will be consistent with our own national interests.”127 For the next forty years the NED would openly fund “pro-democracy” opposition movements against administrations that failed to fall in line with the new neoliberal orthodoxy or the U.S. agenda more broadly.128 Allen Weinstein, who helped establish the NED, put it like this: “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.”129

The same year the NED was founded, Gene Sharp launched the Albert Einstein Institution (AEI), a public-facing non-profit dedicated to advancing “the worldwide study and strategic use of nonviolent action.”130 Thomas Schelling, Sharp’s Cold War mentor from the CIA at Harvard, would sit on the board of directors. With neoliberalism at home and communist rollback abroad, Sharp and AEI staff would spend the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s tracking, studying, consulting with, and training nonviolent social movements calling for “democratic freedoms and institutions” around the world.

According to its own annual reports, AEI did not prioritize fighting dictators and promoting “democratic freedoms and institutions” in US client states like Saudi Arabia, Zaire, Chile, El Salvador, or Guatemala. These countries are either never mentioned, or mentioned only in brief passing, in two decades worth of AEI annual reports. Rather, AEI and its adjuncts consistently focused their efforts in countries where political leadership was resisting NATO’s geostrategic priorities and/or the economic liberalization programs being pushed by the World Bank, the IMF, and U.S. Treasury’s “Washington Consensus”: countries like the Soviet Union, Burma, Thailand, Tibet, Yugoslavia, China, Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, and post-collapse Belarus, Ukraine, and Georgia.131 In a number of these cases, the movements trained in Sharp’s methods successfully executed nonviolent revolutions—sometimes called “velvet revolutions” or “color revolutions,” for the telltale use of an official movement color.

The targeted regimes were corrupt and dictatorial to varying degrees; the citizenry had plenty of reason to want change. But always, “the social demands for bread, for work, for effective public services, even for an end to police repression, that drove people into the streets” remained unmet after their nonviolent revolution.132 Rather, in most cases submission to neoliberal structural adjustment followed: selling off state assets, deregulating and privatizing state and worker-owned industry, cutting taxes, rolling back social spending, forcing tight monetary policy, removing price controls, removing capital controls, forcing markets open to Western investors, and establishing free trade zones. For this reason, the late radical Brazilian political economist Moniz Bandeira would argue in his final book, The Second Cold War: Geopolitics and the Strategic Dimensions of the USA, that it was Gene Sharp’s ideas that “lay at the heart” of the U.S.’s “Second Cold War” regime change policy.133

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Like NATO, AEI eventually found its new mandate in the grisly breakup of the multi-ethnic socialist state, Yugoslavia. After World War II, Yugoslavia had accepted development loans from the World Bank and other Western financial institutions. By the late 1980s, Western creditors, led by the IMF, were using their leverage to push Yugoslavia toward neoliberal economic restructuring.159 In January 1991, in defiance of these policies, Slobodan Milosevic, leader of the Yugoslav Republic of Serbia, signed a law behind the backs of international creditors “requiring Serbian-controlled national banks to issue $1.8 billion worth of new money” to pay pensioners, farmers, and avoid industrial bankruptcies.160

The West was incandescent at this upstart nationalist. Western diplomats condemned Milosevic’s move as a “‘fatal assault’ on the country’s standing with Western creditors, since it showed that Belgrade had no control over the money supply.”161 The international press turned sour, the U.S. terminated aid to Yugoslavia, and threatened to use its veto power at the World Bank and IMF to suspend credit.162 The Executive Director of the World Bank offered blunt terms echoing Margaret Thatcher: “We expect [Yugoslavia] to stick to the program. That implies sticking to disciplines that go with the fiscal and monetary policy. Whatever the social cost, there is no alternative.”163

The next ten years were ugly. Yugoslavia descended—some would say was pushed—into the horrendous nationalist violence of the Yugoslav Wars.164 The U.S. did not help matters. The Central Intelligence Agency “helped to train” the separatist Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army—previously considered by the U.S. to be a terrorist group—and “encouraged them to launch a rebellion in southern Serbia in an effort to undermine the then Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.”165 As one European K-For battalion commander complained, “The CIA has been allowed to run riot in Kosovo with a private army designed to overthrow Slobodan Milosevic.” NATO imposed several rounds of economic sanctions, refusing to lift them unless Milosevic accepted permanent NATO occupation and the full privatization of the economy, a demand “deliberately” made “to provoke rejection by Belgrade.”166 When Milosevic refused, as designed, NATO launched a 78-day ariel bombing campaign. Even Henry Kissinger was appalled.167 All this, and yet at the turn of the millennium, Milosevic was still in power. To unseat him, something more was needed.

Since the late eighties, Gene Sharp’s Albert Einstein Institution had been actively reaching out to “Slovenian democrats.”168 In 1997, AEI began communicating with Albanian students, meeting once in person.169 And in March and April of 2000, the Albert Einstein Institution provided a workshop on nonviolent action for two-dozen members of the anti-Milosevic youth organization Otpor!—translated, “Resistance!”—at the Budapest Hilton.170 Funding for the confab came from the International Republican Institute, an NED pass-through.171

Presiding was long-time AEI consultant Colonel Robert Helvey. Helvey was an expert in clandestine actions, and had formerly presided as dean of the Defense Intelligence School, the Defense Intelligence Agency’s training institute.172 He had also served as Defense Intelligence Agency attaché to Rangoon and as instructor at the Naval War College. From March 31 to April 3, Helvey trained the young activists in the theories of Gene Sharp, “who emerged as a sort of guru to Otpor! leaders.”173 According to an understated New York Times Magazine article, “This session appears to have been significant.”

Portions of Sharp’s Politics of Nonviolent Action were translated and compiled as the “Otpor! User Manual.”174 Freedom House, a U.S. democracy promotion NGO and regular recipient of NED funds, paid for the translation, printing and distribution of 5,000 copies of Gene Sharp’s user-friendly pamphlet for nonviolent revolutionaries, From Dictatorship to Democracy.175 These materials were “disseminated to 70,000 activists throughout Serbia.”176 According to The Washington Post, “U.S. taxpayers paid for 5,000 cans of spray paint used by student activists to scrawl anti-Milosevic graffiti on walls across Serbia, and 2.5 million stickers with the slogan ‘He’s Finished…’”177 According to Colonel Helvey, Otpor! received about $25 million from the NED—a fact about which the organization’s leadership apparently lied to membership at the time.178 By fall of 2000, “Otpor was no ramshackle students’ group? it was a well-oiled movement backed by several million dollars from the United States.”179 Otpor! enjoyed not only U.S. money, but also audience with high-ranking officials: U.S. representatives from the U.S. Institute for Peace and the National Endowment for Democracy, former American ambassador to Croatia William D. Montgomery, and Madeleine Albright herself.180

In September 2000, Milosevic was unseated. In 2001, he would be arrested for war crimes and despite promises to the contrary, hauled off to The Hague for trial.181 In 2018 he was posthumously acquitted.182 All told, the NED spent $41 million to topple Milosevic in “the Bulldozer Revolution.”183 The final nails were driven into the Yugoslav project; economic liberalization accelerated.184 Dianna Stefanova, director of the European Agency for Reconstruction’s office on privatization in Kosovo, echoed the neoliberal refrain: “We must privatize… There is no alternative.”

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Some of Helvey’s most enthusiastic trainees were two young men named Srdja Popovic and Slobodan Djinovic. After success in their home country, they set out to become nonviolent action trainers themselves, founding the Center for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies (CANVAS) in 2003.186 They began with “the concepts of the American academic Gene Sharp,” but on the basis of their revolution in Serbia, “refined and added to those ideas.”187

Popovic and Djinovic set to work training the Georgian youth activists of Kmara!—“Enough!”—who were opposing president Eduarde Shevardnadze with Otpor!’s model and a half-million dollar start-up grant from George Soros’ Open Society Institute.188 Shevardnadze had been a Yeltsin-allied architect of the Soviet Union’s dismemberment and a friend of NATO. For thirty years, he had been the most powerful politician in Georgia. But he had raised the ire of his Western sponsors. First he signed a 25-year gas contract with Russian-owned Gazprom.189 Then he sold Tblisi’s electricity distribution company to Russian-owned United Energy Systems—though only after U.S. firm AES bungled a grid privatization effort, and pulled out when its chief financial officer wound up dead after the company increased electricity rates.190

And so in this context, CANVAS trained and Kmara! agitated. A Peter Ackerman-produced film about Otpor!, Bringing Down a Dictator, was broadcast repeatedly on anti-Shevardnadze network television.191 As one activist said, “All the demonstrators knew the tactics of the revolution in Belgrade by heart because they showed . . . the film on their revolution. Everyone knew what to do. This was a copy of that revolution, only louder.” The Washington Post reported that “thousands were trained in the techniques honed in Belgrade”—that is, Gene Sharp’s politics of nonviolent action. By November 2003, Shevardnadze had been ousted by “The Rose Revolution.” Even The Guardian charged the U.S. with undertaking another regime change “trick.”192 Shevardnadze was replaced by slick Columbia Law grad Mikhail Saakashvili, who re-established friendly relations with the IMF, privatized public hospitals and clinics, deregulated the health insurance system, increased military and prison spending, signed the Economic Liberty Act which restricted the state’s ability to manage the economy, and reversed foreign policy, inciting a war with Russia.

CANVAS also coached the young Ukrainian agitators of Pora!—“It’s Time!”—who opposed leader Leonid Kuchma.193 Kuchma was corrupt, but his real political error was selling anti-aircraft radars to Saddam Hussein.194 In November 2004, The Guardian declared, “US campaign behind the turmoil in Kiev,” and reported that the U.S. had already spent about $14 million in an effort to oust Kuchma.195 The “Orange Revolution” continued apace, and by early 2005, Kuchma was out and U.S.-favorite Viktor Yushchenko, former head of the Ukrainian central bank with close ties to racist ultranationalists, was in.196

In 2013, Wikileaks released emails revealing that Popovic, Otpor! star and Sharpian trainer, had been collaborating with private intelligence firm Stratfor since 2007, sharing contacts, information, and analysis from within social movements around the world.197 Popovic’s explanation: “We believe in talking to everybody…”

Oh, just read it all. Every student of National Security in India should be familiar with every word written here... it goes into the particulars of how colour revolutions were planned, financed, and implemented in multiple parts of the world after the cold war.

I have been banging on this very forum that the cong/upa are a collection of ngos whose MO would be familiar with these types of destabilising influences. See even recently RaGa and the Queen bee were taking instructions from the PRC ambassador.Consider that whilst the elections were still ongoing their friends in the media sought to undermine the judiciary, and to frustrate the election outcome uusing some of the activities that we have seen elsewhere.Some of the methods have been used by the cia in the past in places like Fiji, Guyana, Suriname to overthrow the elected mainly Indian parties.The whole aap bandwagon with their meaningless Magasassy prizes is also a giveaway

sudarshan wrote:My idea was as follows. It is impossible to reduce the fundamental truth (which is the goal of Sanatana Dharma) to logical axioms, since that fundamental truth is defined as being beyond logic itself, beyond axioms. It just IS.

However, you can reach that truth by persistent efforts (sadhana). This sadhana takes the form of bhakti marga, gyana marga, or karma yoga. A subset of gyana marga would be this logical effort of reduction of SD to axioms.

The idea is that ordinary folk, who have undergone a STEM education, have already performed some sadhana, though not with the goal of attaining moksha - their goal was more along the lines of making a living, with maybe 1% of those folk being truly motivated by scientific achievement and curiosity or the upliftment of the world at large. However, at least a fraction of them have certainly undergone the discipline of rigorous study. Can those years of study be employed in some way to get a slight headstart at true spiritual sadhana? IOW, can the scientific training, which is based on axioms of science and mathematics, be converted into some little "extra credit" to get some spiritual insight? How would we go about doing that?

By coming up with axioms which relate to Sanatana Dharma itself. Note, once again, that the fundamental truth is beyond these axioms, so all that the axiom view affords, is a little reduction in the spiritual effort, by redirecting "STEM sadhana" towards "moksha sadhana." It also serves as a gentle introduction to people unfamiliar with SD - they too can employ their STEM training to get a little insight and familiarity with SD.

I had come up with three fundamental axioms, and tried to show that all the dharmic paths of India - SD, Jainism, Buddhism, and Sikhism were consistent with these axioms. That the differences in interpretation between these paths, were more like the differences between the ensemble view and the Copenhagen view of quantum mechanics, rather than like the difference between Newtonian and quantum physics.

I know its OT, but I would love to learn more about your axioms sudarshan-ji.

Me too want to know about them sudarshan ji. I recommend admins open a new thread if they think it is a value add to the nation building in a different way...

It is becoming common experience that our culture is being attacked for its practices by leftist, atheists, and abrahamic people. We only have our Swamis/Sadgurus to defend. But most of them are not officially connected with STEM studies. Or most of the STEM scholars are not have gone deep into studying these philosophies. It is a very bold statement to suggest that, but the effort to aligning those principles with STEM studies by and large is missing or may be not coming to mainstream. Some times even most of the educated go mum not knowing how to defend our ritualistic practices of Dharma and taking that to higher level of Vedanta philosophy explaining the ultimate goal of life. It is a vast subject and hard to sustain till the end and could be easily lost in the conversation. Whereas the axioms of western religions are based upon a lure of achieving similar to materialistic pleasures in its purest/perfect form in so called heaven and can be easily convincing to masses. That is the danger Yindoo (or all eastern) religion is facing.

Like Adi shankara who roamed all over the country to revive SD millennia ago, there is a need in present society to evolve, understand and redefine the essence of Sanatan Dharma in the context of the evolution of modern Science & Technology (at least convincing about the essence or goal of Sanatan Dharma to some extent). Or else we cannot stand for long. Before SD goes, the abrahamic religions will be first to go to the onset of new age of science, if sanity prevails in the world. This is where I believe Swami Vivekananda & Swami Ramtirth predicted about India becoming Vishwa Guru in this century along with becoming a super power economically & militarily. Otherwise we will be just another China a boring robotic society with materialistic comforts, not knowing what next... may be Mars or Star Trek..